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George W. Bush told the United Nations to put up or shut
up, and just in time.

We had heard enough from
Colin, Don, Condi, and the men
who left the Gulf war unfinished to
thoroughly disguise the president's
intentions.

Yesterday he finally talked the
talk.

"The Security Council
resolutions will be enforced," the
president told the U.N. General
Assembly. "The just demands of
peace and security will be met. Or
action will be unavoidable. And a
regime that has lost its legitimacy
will also lose its power."

Translation (we think) from
diplo-speak to bunkhouse English:
"You guys have adopted your mouthy resolutions, using all
the right words. Nobody, least of all Saddam Hussein, thinks
you really mean any of it. But I mean what I say. You've got
the bluster, but I've got the bombs. Just get out of the way."

Now the Europeans and the Democrats in Congress will
stand back to see if he really means to walk the walk.

"No one who heard President Bush's speech could be in
any doubt about the urgency of dealing with the threat posed
by Saddam Hussein," Jack Straw, the British foreign
secretary, said.

Everyone, even the Europeans, have seen the urgency for
weeks. Not everyone has wanted to do anything about it.
Tom Daschle, the leader of the Democratic majority in the
U.S. Senate, for example. Echoing the U.N. delegates who
imagine they were sent to New York to enjoy the sweet life
in Manhattan, but not necessarily to disturb tyrants or disrupt
the evil they do, Mr. Daschle said "questions" about
Saddam's intentions still have to be "answered," and besides,
his partisan colleagues in the Senate want to see the reaction
of "the international community" before they authorize force to
eliminate Saddam's ability to slice, dice and fry Americans by
the millions (and maybe even South Dakotans by the dozens).

All this will change in a nanosecond once the argument is
over, the troops are on the way and the bombs begin to fall
on Baghdad. Tom Daschle will bump Dick Gephardt out of
the way to be the first in front of the cameras, decked out in
his varsity sweater emblazoned with a big B, leading cheers.

The Republicans want to give the president a resolution
sooner than later, in advance of whatever the United Nations
doesn't do. "We must vote to show support for the president
right now," Sen. Trent Lott, the leader of the party, said last
night. John McCain, for once, eagerly agreed. He promised
to twist Tom Daschle's arm.

The Democrats in Congress, particularly in the Senate,
want to wait until after the November elections to debate a
resolution in support of the president. That way they can
avoid offending anyone before Nov. 5. Otherwise, the
Democrats will put themselves in the position of Gov. Bill
Clinton on the eve of the Gulf war, when he wanted to please
the Democratic dovecote, but was afraid of the good ol'
boys. So he told reporters later, after Congress adopted the
resolution in support of the war, that he would have voted for
it, but he actually agreed with those who voted against it. (It
was the first inkling of what was in store for the Union, that
Arkansas would finally get even for Appomattox.)

The president's decision to humor the United Nations is
surely one last genuflection to multicultural moonshine, of a
piece with love songs sung over the months since September
11 to Muslims who regard Jews as apes, admonitions to
American schoolgirls to find Arab pen pals, to learn the lyrics
of Islamic hymns of peace on earth and goodwill to all men,
that the Saudi imams don't really mean it when they pray to
Allah to "destroy the Jews and their supporters, destroy the
Christians and their supporters and followers, shake the
ground under them, instill fear in their hearts and freeze the
blood in their veins." (You can get all the words by tuning in
to Friday prayers on almost any Arab television or radio
station.)

Learning to love your enemies is all very nice, and maybe
even necessary, but not when they've got a lot of really bad
bugs and canisters of phosgene. When combined with wishy,
such presidential rhetoric comes out washy. This is not
rhetoric to fire up men who will shortly be asked to risk their
lives - some to give their lives - to enforce a president's
will. Men will follow a leader to hell and back, but few will
die to make the world safe for pen pals.

George W. Bush is never better than when he talks tough
and sounds as if he means it. His stance as a man willing to go
it alone if necessary - the stance that the White House
spinmeisters insisted last night was merely media malarkey -
is precisely what bolstered the confidence of his countrymen
over the past 12 months. It might have been the shot of
testosterone to bestir the delegates of the United Nations
General Assembly. Maybe, when Saddam Hussein next
flaunts his contempt for U.N. resolutions, the delegates will
screw up enough courage to adopt another resolution. But
the president wasn't talking to the world yesterday. He was
talking past the world to us, and what he said sounded just
about right to the Americans who will be called on to finish
the job.